


Just In Time

by ViridiaHiddleston



Category: British Actor RPF
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Marriage, Sad, relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:44:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViridiaHiddleston/pseuds/ViridiaHiddleston
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebecca Jones is a normal woman, with a normal life and a normal job working in a book store. One day, though, one of her customers changes her life. And he looks just the tiniest bit familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just In Time

He had never enjoyed the sounds inside hospitals. Almost everything he heard reminded him of pain, of sadness, of death. On this day, though, he wasn't paying much attention to the sounds around him as he hurried through the seemingly endless corridors to get back to her room. The coffee he had purchased had been long forgotten the moment one of the doctors had approached him and told him that there were only a few moments left to say good bye.

They'd been married for almost forty-nine years, had already planned a trip for their big anniversary the following year, and then she had collapsed on her way home from buying groceries, had been found by a man called Frank and had been brought to the hospital. It hadn't even been longer than a few hours since all of that had happened, yet it seemed like an eternity for him. He had spent every single minute by her side and had only left her to get some coffee when the doctors had shooed him out so they could check on her again. A heart attack, they had said. They had saved her life, but had not been able to promise him any kind of recovery. Her heart was weak, her brain had been without oxygen for a while before she had been found and it had resulted in a coma. One that, apparently, wasn't going to last very long for her pulse had been getting weaker and weaker by the minute.

He opened the door to her room to find a nurse sitting by his beloved wife's side, a spot that was abandoned immediately to make room for him. He took the hand that still wore the ring he put onto it so many years ago and brought it to his mouth to place a soft kiss onto the wrinkled skin. It was time, time to let her go. Time to tell her he loves her one last time, thought he never believed that coma patients could actually hear what was going on around them. At that moment he wished for nothing more than to have one last moment with her, one moment of consciousness to tell her everything that had never been said before, not even in forty-nine years of being with her. Yet all he got was to watch her take one last breath, the sound of it drowned out by the peeping of the life support machine next to her bed. His vision blurred, eyes filling with hot tears that seemed to burn his very skin before they fell onto the white linen beneath him. She was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

It took him weeks to be able to go through some of her personal things. To even look at the room that had once been the one she had always read in. Her own little escape from the world. Her beloved books were catching dust now, the blanket she had curled up under lay forgotten, draped over the large armchair that stood by the window. As he stepped into the small room small clouds of dust rose up, were caught by the sunlight and made him cough lightly. He felt guilty then, feeling like he should have paid attention to this part of the house much sooner. 

Several hours later most of her books had been put into boxes, ready to be picked up so they could find a new home with someone who would appreciate them as much as she always had. Only a few ones were remaining. And he picked up the next one, turning it around to discover that it was her diary. He smiled, remembering the many times he had seen her write into it. Usually right after dinner, while he had spent his time reading through scripts and, later on in their marriage, writing his own ones. Not once had she allowed him to read in it and he gently ran a finger over the cover, its leather showing signs of how old this book actually was, before he opened it, reading a few passages here and there until his eyes rested upon his own name. And what he read made him drop the book that she had treasured so much, even years after its pages had all been filled.

 

_August 24th, 2023_

 

_Okay, this may seem completely crazy, but I think I know who that old man was. But it's completely impossible. And I can never tell my husband about it. Dear diary, I think Tom himself somehow traveled through time and made it possible for me to meet him!_

 

He frowned, scanning the page once more just to make sure that his old eyes hadn't deceived him. Had she been joking? It didn't seem at all like her to write such nonsense. And if she had really believed in this, why had she never told him about it in all those years? Time travel, well, it had been possible for over twenty years now. Only for the people who could afford it, of course. And no one really cared much what they did during their trips through time. But he had never felt the need to watch his ancestors or future generations when all he had ever wanted in life had been given to him already. Was he really the reason his wife and him had even met? She had actually told him about that old man she had met so many years ago. The one he had always silently thanked for making it possible for her to.. and .. and she really thought it was he himself? Would that mean that...?

 

* * *

 

 

"Please sign this here and we need your initials here and down there, Mr. Hiddleston."

Tom did as he was told and looked at the woman who had handed him the necessary papers. He had paid them a small fortune for this trip only to make sure that nothing could possibly go wrong with the process, there had been accidents when people had tried to copy the technology and send people back in dodgy basements, only to end up with half a person returning from it, or not even making it into the different time. If what his wife had written down in her diary was indeed true, and she had written it before time travel had been invented, then he could not take any chances. He had to make sure that his younger self would meet that wonderful woman he had learned to love so long ago and, perhaps, he could tell her to have her heart checked regularly while he was at it.

"We're ready for you, Mr. Hiddleston." The brunette behind the counter told him and he followed her through the brightly lit building, past more doors than he had the patience to count, and into a small room furnished with only a table upon which rested the helmet Tom knew to be the key to make the trip. Hopefully, in only a matter of minutes, he would get to see Becca again.

 

 


End file.
